Our cats

Lily

Lily came to me in the early spring of 2013, just after I had lost Benny. I wasn’t actually really looking for another cat, but just looked on Ebay Kleinanzeigen what was available, when I saw the ad for Lily. She was about a year old, classified as a he, and named “Pimba.” I immediately fell in love with the picture of her, and as I always had wanted a British Shorthair, I jumped at the chance. Her former owner got a new job, and couldn’t take care of her anymore. For more of the story about her adoption, look here.

She is classified in our house as “Silly Lily”, as she loves to run around the house at full speed, preferably carrying a rubber band in her mouth, and announcing loudly towards everyone that she has caught a rubber band.

Lately, she has also been much more cuddly and absolutely demands cuddles on my lap when I sit down in the evening on the couch, and purrs up a storm then.

She is also a very proficient hunter, and has twice (in my first apartment in Lippstadt) caught a bat on my balcony. No idea how she managed that….

Felix

We got Felix in the spring of 2021 - he was a rehoming from a nice couple who was about to move, and had moved quite a bit in the last time. They felt they couldn’t do Felix justice, and just looked for a new home for him. He was about 9 months old at the time, and was probably just a little bit too active for their small apartment, and for being an only cat.

He was very terrified when he came to us, more than I was used to with other cats, who are usually weary of their new surroundings, but he was on another level. He warmed up quickly, though, and after two days it was too boring being left alone in the upstairs, and he managed to pull apart the gate to there.

He became quickly fast friends with Teddy, and they were up to all kinds of mischief, and he even managed to get Lily to at least tolerate him so much that he is allowed to annoy her every now and then without being slapped three days into the future.

Felix is the most dedicated outside cat I ever had, and it became quickly clear that we needed some means of keeping track of him. So he is the only cat of ours who has a GPS tracker, and we can follow his kilometers of walks everyday. It is normal for him to walk around at least 5km a day, but it really can be much more.

When we go out for our Lunch walk, and he is there, he loves to walk with us until a certain point, and then waits there patiently for us to return. If he cannot see us when we walk past there on the way back, he will wait there until we get him - even for hours or until it is dark. The best day in his life so far was when Tor Livar went on a walk into the forest (to look for his GPS tracker, actually, which he had lost), and he could come with for about an hour.

He is very sceptical about strangers - you could really notice that he was born during the pandemic when there was very little visits. When we had visitors coming to our house for the first time, he was in full panic mode and even tried to open a nearly closed window. It took him about a day until he was comfortable enough to eat. It has gotten better, but it still takes a bit for him to warm up to new people.

On the other hand, his trust in us is complete. Pick him up? Sure! Clip his claws? Of course, he even starts purring, and you don’t need to hold him.

We are just curious in what kinds of mischief he will get in the future.

In Memoriam

Cleo

Cleo was my first cat ever. She came to me in the summer of 2004, and had been living with me ever since. She came from my at-the-time mother in law, as a test run how living together with a cat is, and as I suspected I was a little bit allergic to cats, I didn’t want to adopt a cat just to have to send it back after a while. So the deal with my mother in law was made that we “try out” Cleo, and return Cleo to her. Well, it is clear how that went…

Cleo moved with me from Austria to my first apartment in Lippstadt, then moved with me in Lippstadt, and then together with me and my husband to Norway. She has seen more countries than some people I know!

As she got older, she got a little grumpier, especially towards other cats. When Teddy moved in with us, that was too much, and in the spring of 2019 she moved to live permanently in my office where I keep her company during the week. There, she had taken up permanent residence on my lap. On the weekends, she enjoyed coming upstairs in our media room, and lie between me and my husband on the couch.

We had been in and out at the vet for basically a year and a half, and she had been diagnosed with chronic renal failure. We had the vet check her blood regularly, and at the end of March 2020 it had progressed to stage 4 renal failure. Cleo hadn’t been wanted to be touched the day before, she got really growly when you petted her, so with a heavy heart we made the decision to let her go and not let her suffer for any longer. I had taken her home from the vet that day, as I wasn’t yet ready to make decision, especially not as I was alone at the vet, without my husband. We had contact before with a very nice vet who just visits at home and doesn’t have his own practice (Dyrlegen rett hjem in Drammen), and he agreed to come by on short notice, just that evening. We spent the day with her in our media room, and that was where Cleo finally closed her eyes as well, lying on her favorite couch, in my lap.

It is never easy to let a beloved family member pet go, but it was definitely for the best for Cleo, and we couldn’t have wished for a better farewell.

Benny

Benny came to us in the same year as Cleo. After my boyfriend at the time started with nursing school, Cleo was basically alone all day, and it quickly showed. When we came home in the evening, she went totally crazy - I remember her once just jumping high repeatedly at the tiles in the bathroom, and just sliding down, claws fully extended. She was lonely.

So I started to look for a second cat, when a colleague of mine forwarded me a post on a mailing list of a farm south of Vienna, where the people just had two litters of kittens and were looking to give them away. Cleo was not at all impressed by the new addition to the household, but quickly settled with Benny, and the loneliness was gone.

Benny was a super sweet cat. I remember multiple times only after an hour or two noticing him, as he had curled up in my lap while I was sitting at my desk. He also liked to climb under the blanket with me while I was on the couch, watching some TV. But he was also the one who really enjoyed going outside on the balcony, and even climbing on the roof there, sometimes giving me a near heart attack.

Unfortunately, his stay with me was much too short. Around Christmas 2012 I felt a lump on his jawbone, and first the vet thought it was some infected tooth. But it actually was an osteosarcoma, bone cancer, which grew like crazy. About 8 weeks later, Benny could not close his mouth anymore properly, and so it was time to let him go.

He rests now in my parent’s garden. This was the first time I had to deal with the loss of a pet, and letting him go, and making the decision to have to let him go, was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But I wouldn’t want to miss the nine years I had with him for anything, even if it meant pain in the end.

Hugo

After I had lost Benny, and gotten Lily, I toyed for a long time with the idea of a third cat. I witnessed now first hand how fast you suddenly can go from having two cats to a single, and as I was travelling quite a bit for work during that time, a single cat just wasn’t an option.

I bought a flat, and the restriction in my rental contract about two cats was no longer there. I finally started looking for earnest, and found Nachträubers Cats in Lippstadt, a British Shorthair breeder. I have always been fascinated with the looks, the soft fur and mellow demeanor of BSH cats, and I as could finally afford it, I decided to go for a pure breed BSH. I wanted another boy, as a third lady with Cleo and Lily already didn’t seem to be a very good option, and when I met Hugo, it really was love at first sight.

His full name was Hugo Boss von den Nachträubern, and he had the softest, finest fur I have ever touched on a cat. He was also extraordinarily lazy, and would do anything to avoid strenous exercise. He liked cuddling, though, and especially belly scratches there. To a point, where he would move your hand with his paws to his belly when you were patting his head. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body, and got along very well with the two other cats.

In the spring of 2018, my husband and I got married and Cleo had some health problems as well, so we really didn’t realize that Hugo was losing weight at an alarming rate. When someone finally commented that he looked like just skin and bones, and we put him on the scale, he was down to around 3 kilos, from 5.5 in his prime. Needless to say, he went to the vet next day, they were very concerned with him as he was a bit anemic already, and sent us to a vet clinic in Oslo. He had to spend the night there, and they did an ultrasound the next day, discovering growths in his liver and his lymph nodes. There was nothing they could do for him anymore, and with a sad heart, we had to say good bye to him the same day.

Addendum

If you have cats, make sure to weigh them regularly. They are extraordinarily good at hiding bad things until it is too late. We have instated a weighing schedule about once a week, and keep the data in a spreadsheet, so we can immediately spot anomalies. Maybe we could have done something for Hugo if we discovered it early, maybe we couldn’t have. But it surely wouldn’t have come so quickly over us, or at least Hugo wouldn’t have had to suffer for longer as necessary.

Teddy

Finding a picture of Teddy feels always like a luxury problem. As he is so cute and photogenic, and also quite silly, we have taken tons of pictures from him.

After we had to put Hugo to sleep, it became very quickly clear that he left a huge gaping whole in our life, and when I stumbled onto a posting from Silje Eriksen of NO*Aalta Nor, a British Shorthair breeder, who had a male bi-color British Shorthair ready for a new home in about 6 weeks…..Well, let’s just say, those 6 weeks felt extremely long.

His official, full name was NO*Aalta Nor Theodore, but it was clear from the first day that he would just be Teddy. He liked to cuddle with us a lot - but just when we are lying in bed. Otherwise, he was much more focused on eating and begging for treats, watching the birds outside or our fish in the fish tank. One of his preferred entertainments was also to annoy Lily, and I never can really gauge the relationship of the two. It feels like Teddy desperatly wants to be every other cats friend, they are just not that interested in that.

You have never seen a cat appear as fast as when we open the treat drawer, and disappear when the claw clippers come out.

He passed away in August 2021 (read more) due to an ongoing case of HCM which made his heart most likely just give out.